Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels (10088)

Recensione del libro di jonathan swift in inglese

Plot: The author tells the events in a linear way. The story begins when Gulliver decided to work on a merchant ship and he relates his shipwreck on the Island of Lilliput, where people are six inches tall. Gulliver is Lilliputians’ prisoner, but they become Gulliver’s friends so the king asks a military help to Gulliver but he doesn’t accept and he escapes.
In the second part Gulliver is accidentally left astore on Brobdingnag, where the inhabitants are as tall as steeples, but a farmer finds Gulliver and he uses him as a puppet for money. Gulliver returns in england with a big eagle. The third part deals with a visit to the flying island of Laputa, and its neighbouring continent and the capital city, Lagado. Here the satire is directed against philosophers, men of science, historians, projectors, with special reference to the south sea company. In Laputa Gulliver finds the wise man so wrapped up in their speculations as to be utterly helpless in pratical affairs. At Lagado he visits the Accademy of projectors, where professors are engaged in extracting sunshine from cucumbers and similar absurd enterprises. The Strulbrugs, a race endowed with immortality, so far from finding this a boon, turn out to be the most miserabile of mankind.

In the fourth part Swift describes the country of the Houyhnhnms, who are horses endowed with reason; their rational, clean and simple society is contrasted with the filthyness and brutality of the Yahoos, beasts is human shape whose human vices Gulliver is reluctantly forced to recognize.
He finally returns home he recoils from his own family in disgust.

Narrator: the narrator is inside and real. The novel is narrated by Gulliver, he isn’t an omniscient narrator. When Gulliver travels his wiew point changes; sometimes Gulliver speaks for Swift and othertimes he doesn’t.

Characters:
* Lemuel Gulliver: He is the protagonist of the novel and he is a doctor who loves to travel. This character is very determined to bring his travels to conclusion.
* Lilliputians: the inhabitants of Lilliput are very similar to the humans, excepts for their size, they are six inches tall. They are very busy, brave, astute but perfidious.
* Blefuscodiani: the inhabitants of Blefuscu are physically alike the Lilliputians but they are more hospitable and friendly than the population of the near islands.
* The giants of Brobdingnag: the people who lives in Bobdingnag are similar to the humans, excepts for their size, they are ten metres tall. They are a society well organized.

* Laputani: the inhabitants of Laputa are very strange; they are well educated above all in the fields of the astronomy, philosophy and science.
* Struldbruggs: they are immortal people whose principal characteristic is a little coloured mole on their forehead, wich changed with the passing of time.
* Houyhnhnms: they are not human beings like the other characters of the book; for this reason it is underlined the incapacità of the men to live in peace, without any bad sentiments. The Houyhnhnms can prove a feeling of disgust against the Yahoo, animals alike to the human beings and to Guliiver.

Setting: Gulliver’s Travels has a variety of settings, each of wich symbolized one or more of Swift’s themes. As Gulliver voyages, his viewpoint changes according to the places in which he finds himself and the things that happen to him there.

Theme: the fondamental theme is the accusation of civil society. Swift underlines all corrupt aspects of society that he doesn’t share. In fact Gulliver tells that only sight of men.

Style: the style of language is simple and nice.

Effect: I like this book for its semplicity and fluency, but the author has been very long-winded in some part, in some descriptiones… This book is unreal contrary to Robinson Crusoe, but it is very significant.